


i am easy to find

by afterplaidshirtdays



Category: Fleabag (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, not quite moving on but trying to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23291038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterplaidshirtdays/pseuds/afterplaidshirtdays
Summary: She’s breaking their deal, but he broke her heart.
Relationships: Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73





	i am easy to find

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning: I think the ending of the show is perfect and sad and awful and still makes me cry and absolutely nothing should be done to change it. However, ideas for how our wonderful Fleabag would be dealing with the fallout came to me and I had to jot them down somehow.
> 
> Title comes from The National

Sometimes she hovers in the vestibule. Pam gives her a look when she’s gathering the collection plate and gives her another when she enters the church through the heavy doors, but thankfully never says a thing.

The hymns give her nothing but she hums along anyway, hearing his voice through the speaker spilling into the room. He sounds like he’s smiling, whatever he’s doing. 

The mass ends and she leaves once people start spilling out. She thinks he catches her eye when she makes it across the street but tries not to look back and check.

  
  
  
  


Sometimes she brings Jake his instrument to church festivities because she can’t help herself and learns not to cry when she hears an Irish voice in the distance. 

Sometimes the hole in her heart gets filled just a little when the priest, her favorite priest, meets her eye and throws a tight-lipped smile her way, his eyes twinkling with a mixture of mirth and sorrow. Maybe he’s glad to see her and maybe he’s not. 

She’s breaking their deal, but he broke her heart.

It’s brief, and she hates herself for going anyway, but his words, even from far away, sound like velvet against her sheets. She wonders if he still smells like tobacco and vanilla. Of gin and tonics and the outdoor garden. Even in her brief time with him she still remembers so much and each day fears losing those memories.

But then he laughs, a sweet laugh from the other side of the picnic, his eyes scrunched in amusement, and it brings a small smile to her lips from afar, noting to herself that of course she won’t.

  
  
  
  


Claire warns her not to go back and she certainly doesn’t _intend_ to, but she listens in the vestibule anyway. The cadence in his voice, the joy in his words. 

Sometimes she thinks she’ll break their pact for real and find him, gin and tonics in tow. Ask him to take back what he said. _It'll pass_ lingers in her ear, and she wonders just when that will be.

But then she hears his voice, loud and wonderfully happy through the vestibule speaker, and nods to herself over and over that this is what is best. It's a mantra, for she's still trying to believe it herself.

  
  
  
  


She almost calls up Harry. She used to play him like a fiddle and she’s sure she could do it again. His perfect family with his perfect baby and his perfect wife. 

The thought turns her stomach and she briefly wonders what would happen if she called him and claimed to have something of his, a knick knack she could drum up out of nowhere, kiss him like she used to without feeling. Fuck him without this all-encompassing sadness. She’s doing better, but sometimes the urge to be bad hits her again, a primal desire to throw other people’s lives into chaos. 

She takes a drag of her cigarette, her third in a row, and lets out a tear. _I'm good now. I don’t do that anymore._

  
  
  
  


Claire and Klare find happiness in Finland and she visits for a weekend. The cafe is doing well, it really is, and she mildly trusts her assistant manager to run things.

In Finland she drinks hot chocolate and walks for miles as tourists do and almost finds a stranger to help her slip back into old patterns. He's relatively handsome and it would take her mind off everything else for, she looks at him, at least thirty minutes, but she doesn’t feel anything else of substance. And that’s what she’s been trying to find, something that makes her heart feel lighter but still a reminder that she has one.

Claire finds her soon after with a smile so bright she hasn’t seen in years, divorce papers signed and delivered.

As she drinks the night away with her sister, she hopes maybe that kind of happiness can belong to her, too. 

  
  
  
  


She goes to the confessional, once. It’s meant as a goodbye, even though she knows she already got one of those. But something always pulls her to him, a kind of emotional tether she wishes would let up just a tiny bit. Her mind fills with ideas she’s seen on television and read in books about something called closure. Or maybe she just wants to be a little bit closer to him again. 

“Now is the part where you say ‘bless me father for I have sinned’,” he says in a not unkind voice after she kneels and closes the door with a small thud.

She breathes deeply and remembers another night like this, thick air and her voice coming out in half sobs.

“Does it count if you’re not Catholic so you don’t believe in sins?” she quips, a sad, sardonic laugh escaping. At least she didn't make an innuendo about the kneeling, that's progress.

There’s silence, thick and heavy, and she wonders if he’ll kick her out, chastise her for yet again breaking their deal.

He only sighs, long and hard, the screen between them feeling like an unfair landmine.

She speaks up before he can respond, afraid of the rejection, afraid of the exact things that keep her up at night. Afraid of becoming who she was again. Above all else she did truly like talking to him. “I saw Pam earlier. Still hates me.”

“She doesn’t,” he says, and she wonders if his brow is furrowed, torn between exaltation and exasperation at her arrival. Wonders if he thinks about her as much as she does him, wonders if he knows just how much he meant to her.

There’s another beat of silence and the wanton part of her wants to move to his side of the confessional and let him make his choice again, this time with another outcome. But she stays silent, scared but content to listen to him breathe.

“I miss you,” he chokes out, and it sends a ripple of sorrow through her. “I always miss you.”

She lets out a tear, then another. It feels like being ripped apart again. There’s so much she wants to say but she can’t form the words, wiping away tears from her cheek. _Love me again_ , she thinks, selfish and sad. 

Being in this building, this small room adjoining his, feels painfully familiar. A place she never would’ve entered otherwise now feels like a playground for temptation. He chose this over her, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever quite forgive the church for that. She accepts it, or at least she’s trying to, but it hurts beyond words still. 

There’s a sound of movement from the other part of the church and she blinks away more tears, groaning at the intrusion.

“I think we’re closing up,” he says quietly. “Best you go first this time.”

She nods to herself and picks herself up from the kneeler. She feels foolish and stupid and thinks _I lost to this?_ But then the bells ring, signaling something she’s sure is important, and lets another tear fall. There’s no goodbye because she can’t bring herself to do it. Not with him, not ever.

The breeze outside brings with it a cold chill. She twists the knot of her jumper tighter, breathing in the cold, brisk air. It dries her tears and blows through her hair.

She looks back, observing the slope of the building, the curves and wonder it must’ve taken to build. The bells ring louder and then he’s at the door, face as red as hers. She nods slightly, tugging harder at her sleeves, giving him a small smile.

The priest runs a hand over his face, and she wonders what goes through his head. How big his heart is for this, for something she can’t understand. 

Another nod, and she walks away, hoping a fox shows up that he can see this time.

 _I always miss you too_ , she thinks, and wills it to be enough.


End file.
